Amazing Planet Mandala: the Dance of Shiva

OK, let's have some fun. In Sirius (sorry, this is not available in Kepler), select either the Forecast icon, or in the menu at the top either "Forecast" or "Art Gallery". Now select the menu item for Planet Mandalas. In the Planet Mandala window select "Helio, 2 Planets, Actual Position". This selection displays patterns created by the positions as viewed heliocentrically. Now click the scroll down arrow for the list of planet mandalas of this type and scroll towards the bottom and select one of the three "Earth-Mercury: Shiva Dance" items. As you can see there is a 30 second, 1 minute, and 2 minutes version. The actual time for the presentation varies depending on the speed of the computer. First you will see the image being analyzed for its size and other characteristics with black lines. When this finishes, the show begins! After about 5 or 10 seconds you will begin to see a swirling image created by the relationship of the Earth and Mercury to each other. To me it looks a bit like an ancient goddess-like image of perhaps a Mayan or Hindu quality. Amazing! Physicists have taken an interest in the fascinating patterns created by orbiting planets. For more information read the article at http://astrosoftware.com/PlanetMandalasAndNewScience.htm and at http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SolarSystemMandalas/

Time Line Format Features

When I show people the time line format, they almost always love it and use it for most of their forecasting. The ability to have a visual presentation of what transiting and progressed aspects are in effect at a given time is wonderful. Now here are a few tricks you may not be aware of: first, did you notice the thin green or red line below the time line? Green indicates that the transiting or progressed planet is direct, and red indicates that it is retrograde. Now, in the window where you make time line format selections, notice that details of the highlighted forecast method are shown at the bottom of the screen. You can easily, for example, highlight progressed-to-natal and select all planets for progressions, and highlight transit-to-natal and select only outer planet transiting planets. Now click the "Customize Planets and Aspects" button. In Sirius you can now click on the "House/Sign" tab to add things like the house position and/or zodiac sign position of the planets and you can choose to display the full position of the planet or just the zodiac sign. Now this is cool: you also have an option to view aspects in the natal chart that involve the same planet, with an additional option to include aspects by planets ruled by the signs of the transiting and natal planet. For example, suppose transiting Uranus is square the natal Sun and the person has Uranus trine natal Sun in the birth chart; this will be displayed. You can also display the aspects involving planets ruling the signs using modern or traditional rulerships. Astrologers like Charles Carter, Robert Blaschke, and many others feel that this is critically important. You can also obtain these features in Kepler 7, although the user interface for making the selections is not quite as elegant, and you have a list of buttons instead of tabs for making selections. Both Sirius and Kepler are amazingly huge programs with seemingly endless features. Don't be afraid to click the Customize button to see the options that are available. This is just one example of the flexibility that is available and the ways in which Kepler and Sirius provide useful and practical information in a simple format for advanced and professional astrologers who will find these features very helpful.